Republican budget would 'decimate' health funding

Health care funding would take the biggest hit from the trillions of dollars in cuts proposed in the Republican budget that passed in theU.S. House of Representativeslast week, according to Ron Pollack, executive director of FamiliesUSA, a national consumer health organization.

The group released two reports Tuesday to clarify how the budget, if passed into law, would affect consumers in every state through reductions in funding, primarily for Medicaid and Medicare.

Though not in the top 10 states impacted, Virginia would stand to lose $542 million in funding for the state's existing Medicaid programs in 2014, a loss that would double by 2017, according to figures supplied by FamiliesUSA. Medicaid, a federal-state partnership, includes payments for nursing home care, for children with chronic conditions such as autism, and for home and community based care for the elderly and disabled. Under the budget's proposed "block-grant" system, there would be a cap on federal spending and the states would pick up increased costs.

In the longer term, the budget would also restructure Medicare, a government program that funds health care for seniors. It would change it from a guaranteed benefit system to "more of a voucher system," in which it would cover a steadily diminishing portion of seniors' insurance premium costs, Pollack said in an audio conference. In Virginia, the loss of Medicare funds would be just shy of $370 million in 2014 and would remove relief for seniors unable to meet their prescription expenses. In the next decade, the age of eligibility for Medicare would rise from 65 to 67.

Additionally, the Republican budget proposes the elimination of tax-credit subsidies included in the Affordable Care Act for middle-income families; the losses in Virginia would amount to $354 million in 2014 and more than triple that in 2016. Further, FamiliesUSA reports, the proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act would result in the addition of 700,000 individuals to the numbers of uninsured in the state.

Pollack concludes that the proposed budget would "decimate health care for children, seniors, people with disabilities and middle class families."